The 11 Must Dos for Successful B2B Marketing
These days, millennials make 73% of B2B buying decisions. If you want to make B2B sales, then you should target your audience where they are: online.
While there are many strategies you can use as part of a successful B2B marketing campaign, much of your focus should be on digital marketing. The right digital marketing techniques and marketing strategies can allow you to reach your target B2B customers while ensuring they recognize the value that you can offer their businesses.
If you want to get B2B marketing right, be sure to follow the “must dos” listed below.
1. Pay Attention to the Buyer’s Journey
When building a B2B marketing strategy, be sure to focus on the buyer’s journey. Work to understand the stages of the buyer’s journey including awareness, consideration, and decision. Then, ensure that you’re connecting with customers every step of the way.
Mapping out the buyer’s journey and using it in your marketing campaigns will help you improve the marketing materials you create, such as content and ad copy.
The buyer’s journey can help guide your business as you market your services and products to customers and can give you an idea of which messages will work for them at any given point.
2. Use an Inbound Marketing Strategy
Outbound marketing strategies such as cold calling can still be beneficial in B2B marketing. However, many marketers now focus on inbound marketing strategies.
Be sure that you’re using an inbound marketing approach online to provide value to your target customer first, before attempting to get a sale. Using inbound marketing allows you to build a relationship with customers without seeming too pushy.
To use inbound marketing effectively, make sure that you’re using SEO techniques, creating great content, and providing value. Recognize your customer’s needs and interests and help them learn more with the content you create.
3. Create Valuable Content
As part of taking an inbound marketing approach, you should also create and share useful content.
There are many types of content that you can use to market your B2B business. A great place to start is adding a blog to your website and writing articles that interest your ideal customer.
You should also use other kinds of marketing content to reach different kinds of customers and give your audience different ways to learn about your industry and what your business has to offer. Other types of content you may want to include in your content marketing strategy include videos, infographics, white papers, e-books, and more.
4. Consider Using Account-Based Marketing
If you spend time working with high-profile B2B clients that offer a lot of value, using account-based marketing can make a lot of sense.
With account-based marketing, you’ll use advanced personalization techniques to tailor sales and marketing messages to an individual B2B account. Taking this approach can achieve great results in B2B marketing, especially if the accounts that you target are valuable enough.
As opposed to taking a one-size-fits-all approach and reaching a lot of potential clients at once, account-based marketing can be a great way to personalize your marketing and make it even more effective.
5. Build a Social Media Presence
To improve B2B marketing, you also need to use social media. Make sure that you’re using social media marketing to spread awareness about your products and services and reach your target audience.
Facebook is one of the most popular platforms to use to connect with B2B customers but there are many other options as well. LinkedIn is also a great social media platform to use as a B2B business and you can connect with a lot of other businesses if you use it effectively.
Posting organically on these social media platforms and running social media ads can be well worth the effort. With the right consistency, you can build strong relationships with your customers and can ensure that they decide to buy from you when the time is right.
6. Prioritize Email Marketing
Unlike other channels, email marketing allows you to contact your target customers directly. This means that it can play an important role in your B2B marketing strategy.
Make sure that you’re taking email marketing seriously and using best practices to get it right. You should think carefully about the copy you use in your emails and should personalize subject lines and the body of your emails as much as possible.
You might also want to automate your email marketing messages with the help of email automation tools. This will allow you to stay in touch with customers and build a relationship by sending messages consistently.
7. Incentivize Customer Referrals
If you’re not making use of referral marketing for your B2B business, then you may be missing out on a lot of sales. Accounting for 65% of sales and leads, referral marketing is the best way to increase revenue.
Be sure that you leverage your existing customer base to market your business and grow over time. Look for a good moment to ask a customer for a referral when building a relationship with them. Consider offering rewards and incentives if they decide to refer a new client or customer to you.
Especially pay attention to high-value customers when asking for referrals. They’ll be more likely to know other valuable clients and customers that you can start working with.
8. Optimize Your Landing Pages
If you want to effectively market your B2B business online, be sure that you build strong landing pages. Great landing pages can make all the difference when trying to get conversions online.
Once someone clicks on an ad, you need to be sure that they convert. Make sure that you don’t skimp on your landing pages and instead put effort into getting their designs and their copy perfect. Your landing pages should look great, include useful information, and feature copy that converts.
Be sure that each landing page you build has a clear goal and that you’re only trying to collect the essential information from a visitor.
9. Take a Multi-Channel Approach
One of the most important things to do when working to build a thriving B2B business is to take a multi-channel approach.
Primarily, you should try to determine where your target audience is hanging out online and then meet them there. However, it’s best to target multiple channels at the same time.
Using multiple tactics and strategies together can help you build more brand awareness and reach your customers more effectively. Marketing multiple channels will help to improve your results and can make more of an impact than just using one channel alone.
10. Run Online Ad Campaigns
While creating content and using inbound marketing strategies can help win over B2B customers in a cost-effective way, paid advertising has its place as well. Traffic that comes from paid online ads leads to 50% more conversions than organic traffic.
Although content marketing and SEO can be great for the long term, online ads can get short-term results more quickly. With pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, you can easily hone in on your target audience and you’ll pay for the clicks that you get back to your website or landing page.
If used wisely and with a strategy in mind, PPC advertising can end up being a great help when building your business and looking for leads. It can help you reach many people in a targeted way and in a short time frame.
11. Analyze Your Data
To get the most out of your B2B marketing strategy, you need to make use of all of the data that you can.
Make sure that you’re collecting customer data and working to understand it and gain valuable insights. The data you collect on your marketing campaigns and your customers can give you a better indication of how you should be marketing your goods and services. Choose some key performance indicators (KPIs) to follow and make sure you monitor their progress as your marketing campaigns go on.
After tracking your results, be sure that you take action based on your findings and make adjustments to your marketing campaigns. By continually analyzing the data and optimizing your campaigns, you can get better and better results as time goes by.
Building a Winning B2B Marketing Strategy With These Guidelines
There’s a lot that goes into creating a successful B2B marketing strategy, so be sure that you understand all of the techniques and tactics that you can use. However, also be sure to stay focused on the buyer’s journey and analyze the results of your campaigns to get better results over time.
Need help perfecting your B2B marketing strategy? Get in touch today to learn more about how we can help your business succeed.
